(NR) David French–Stop Misrepresenting the Masterpiece Cakeshop Case Heading to the US Supreme Court

To the extent that Boylan engages with Phillips’s actual argument, she waves it away with a paragraph so specious that one has to read it to believe it:

Mr. Phillips certainly makes nice-looking cakes. But I’m not sure I’d call them artistic expressions, at least not in the same sense as, say, Joyce’s “Ulysses.” That argument demands that the court get into the business of defining art itself, a door the justices open at their peril. Is a well-manicured lawn a form of art by this definition? How about a lean corned beef sandwich? What would not be art if the court rules to protect icing and buttercream?

In this case, the complaining gay couple ultimately decided on a rainbow cake. Can Boylan not see that the cake clearly and unmistakably sent a specific message? There is a substantial difference between a rainbow symbol at an event celebrating a same-sex wedding and a corned-beef sandwich. Phillips isn’t comparing himself to Joyce, he’s making the painfully obvious point that there’s a viewpoint inherent in the expression his customers asked him to create — a viewpoint that a well-manicured lawn lacks.

Here’s the problem. If a writer squarely addresses the argument that Phillips actually makes, then she will soon run head-on to a sobering constitutional reality. Sexual revolutionaries are asking the Court to overturn generations of constitutional precedent to allow the state to compel American citizens to advance ideas they find reprehensible.

Boylan claims that Phillips is seeking special religious exemptions. To the contrary, sexual revolutionaries are seeking exemptions from the Constitution. They believe that same-sex marriage is so precious that even artists can be conscripted into the ceremony — despite their deeply held beliefs. They believe that the cost of entering the marketplace is not just the loss of your distinct artistic voice but the commandeering of that voice by your ideological foes to advance their ideological interests.